Rebbetzen Tziporah – Tu B’Av … don’t worry

Dear friends,

Tu B’Av is today!

Some of you will be thinking, “okay” and wondering where this is going and why it is relevant. A rather unusual mishneh says, “No days were better to Yisrael than the 15^th of Av and… Yom Kippur (?).” It then goes on to say that on the 15^th of Av the girls of Yerushalaim would go out in borrowed white clothes (so as not to embarrass someone who can’t afford something more expensive) and dance in the vineyards.

What on earth does this have to do with Yom Kippur? To make the question harder, the other place that says “the girls of Yerushalaim went out” was on the day that the Bais Ha Mikdash was built.

One approach is that the month of Av actually has two parts. The first part is tragic, but the second part is one in which that which was cursed is turned inside out, into a time of building and blessing. The reason for this is that the sins that led to the events of the tragic first part of the month had one cause: Fear. The Jews who participated in the sin of the golden calf didn’t know where to turn. They left Egypt behind them, and with that, everything that was “normal” in the sense of fitting into paradigms that were not being changed every few days.

Moshe didn’t come down as expected, and they had no idea of what to do next. The mixed multitude of camp followers (the Airev Rav) told them to escape the doom that faced them by building a religious image (which would unify them, and represent forces that they could turn to). That was bad enough. What was worse was that they celebrated their escape from the intensity of living moment to moment with G-d’s providence by dancing.

Imagine this scenario. You are on a plane (maybe on your way back to Har Nof, the center of the world). You hear an announcement... “Good evening ladies and gentlemen. If there are any pilots on the plane, please come immediately to the front of the plane near the cockpit. You go to one of the flight attendants and ask, “Why do they need a pilot? Is something wrong?” 

The flight attendant answers

“Don’t Worry

Nothing Happened

Everything’s

Okay”

His tone and the slight tremble of his lips tell you that Something Happened. Within a few minutes you find out that both the pilot and the co-pilot have been poisoned. There are nine hours until the flight is scheduled to land. What would you do with the time left? 

Some people would review their lives, confess their sins, and try to make peace with their fate. Others might write a last letter to their family hoping that the glass bottle of orange juice will be found in the sea. You carefully write the numbers of the safe, and of your Other Account…

If you awoke and realized that this was a dream brought on by too much nosh washed down with Diet Coke, you would feel an overwhelming feeling of relief.  The kind of relief that the Jews felt when the members of the mixed multitude told them that there is a way out.  Moshe isn’t coming back. They are saved. The symbol will draw them together, and they will rediscover the joy of having a future.  There’s something to celebrate. The dancing began.

A similar mentality gripped the people when they heard the spies tell them that the Land can’t be conquered. There is an out. We don’t have to risk our lives. We can depose Moshe, have elections and return to Egypt. As easy as that. This time there was no celebration. Their dream had been shattered. What both incidents share in common is hopelessness.

The message of Tu B’Av is that there is hope – the kind of spiritual renewal that comes with Yom Kippur – the kind of renewal of national self-definition that will come when the Bais HaMikdash will be rebuilt – the kind of renewal that comes when barriers of status and financial ability are broken down, as young people seek to build their futures.

Some of you are finding the shidduch scene painful. Others are finding other areas of dashed hopes to be painful. The causes of suffering are innumerable, and no two forms are identical. The remedy is deciding to build and to hope not as an escape but as a means of living with the kind of faith that feeds on truth and closeness to Hashem.   

 

Love,

Tziporah